


Burnt Offerings

by firefly124



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Double Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:18:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the anniversary of his father’s death, Miles ponders the way they mark it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burnt Offerings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [cordelia_v](http://cordelia-v.livejournal.com)'s birthday in 2008.

Miles watched the smoke rising from the little tripod. His mind wandered briefly up to the house where Ekaterin and the twins still slept. She’d be annoyed with him for doing this without her, yet he needed to. That bothered him.

“That look is more than grief.” His mother brushed her fingers along his forehead.

“Why does it matter?” he asked. “Why should burning our hair ease Father’s rest? It’s not as though he’d haunt us if he could, and he surely wouldn’t want your hair burnt. Why not set him a place at table like they do on Marilac, or plant a tree like they do on Komarr, or whatever the Cetas do?”

She looked somewhere far across the grounds or possibly through several wormholes and back to Beta Colony, and Miles was sharply reminded that this wasn’t her ritual to begin with and that she’d never done anything specifically Betan since the prayers she’d murmured at the interment of his ashes.

“It’s nothing to do with the burning,” she said at last. “And everything. Does it ease your heart?”

Reluctantly, he nodded.

“Well then.” She placed an arm across his shoulder.

Bemused, he felt something slot into place.


End file.
